HSBC’s app and mobile banking website are down on one of the biggest shopping days of the year. The outage came on the morning of Black Friday, when most large retailers offer significant sales – and customers are even more likely to be checking their balance. Instead, the app showed an error message indicating that service was unavailable. The bank said it was urgently working to fix the issue, which appeared to bring problems across its services. “We understand some customers are having trouble accessing banking services as usual right now,” HSBC said in a statement. “We’re investigating this as a matter of urgency and will share an update as soon as possible.” HSBC offers a status page but it appears to have not been updated. It showed that all services were operating normally – despite the company’s statement otherwise. Those who bank with First Direct may also be affected, since it is a part of HSBC. Read More Users of iPhones can now check bank balance from Wallet app Nasa has received a signal from 10 million miles away Bitcoin mining rate hits all-time high amid record-breaking prediction for 2024

HANOI, Vietnam--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 11, 2023--

SAG-AFTRA is threatening a walkout by its members working in the video games industry.

By Helen Coster and Zaheer Kachwala News Corp is engaged in "various negotiations" with artificial intelligence companies over

A rare iPhone has sold for almost $200,000. The phone was an original 2007 model of the iPhone, still factory sealed in its box. It is rare even among those elusive first versions of the iPhone, since it has only 4GB of storage. When the iPhone was released, more than 15 years ago, Apple originally offered it in a 4GB or 8GB storage options. The former proved unpopular and Apple struggled to sell it, with most customers instead opting to pay $100 for the extra storage – and it was soon discontinued, just two months after the phone was first released. That means that it has become a “Holy Grail” among collectors of iPhones. Its price reflects that status: original, factory sealed models of the model with larger storage have sold for $40,000 and $63,000 in recent months. The phone came from a member of the original engineering team at Apple when the iPhone first launched, according to to LCG Auctions, which sold the device. The box has never been opened and the phone has never been activated. “Collectors and investors would be hard pressed to find a superior example,” it wrote in the listing. “Relevance and rarity comprise a winning formula for this red-hot collectible.” The company had estimated that the phone would sell for $50,000 to $100,000. In the end, it attracted 28 bids and sold for $190,372.80, LCG Auctions said on its website. The 4GB iPhone had originally sold for $599 when it went on sale at the end of June 2007. Even that eventually proved too much, and Apple dropped the price of the 8GB model to $399 when it discontinued the 4GB version. As well as its 4GB of storage, the phone offered a 12 megapixel camera and 128MB of RAM. Released around 15 years later, the current iPhone 14 Pro comes with up 1TB of storage, a 48MP camera and 6GB of RAM. Read More Apple’s next iPhone may include new battery technology, report suggests Apple launches huge new payment upgrade for iPhone You can now download the huge new iPhone update – if you dare

LAS VEGAS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 18, 2023--

The feats achieved by the Ancient Egyptians have long flummoxed even the most renowned experts. For example, how on earth did they build the Great Pyramid of Giza? It’s taken centuries for scientists and archaeologists to come up with an answer, and even that’s not set in stone. But now, researchers believe they’ve finally worked out how the Great Sphinx was made more than 4,500 years ago. Sure, there’s a pretty broad consensus about how the face of the giant limestone statue was created – it was most likely hand-carved by stone masons. But the imposing, multi-layered body had continued to evade explanation. However, researchers at New York University, have finally concluded that the body came about. And it wasn’t all thanks to the masonry skills of local workers. They believe that the shape was sculpted by Mother Nature herself, in the form wind. “Our findings offer a possible ‘origin story’ for how Sphinx-like formations can come about from erosion,” Leif Ristroph, senior author of the study, said in a statement. “Our laboratory experiments showed that surprisingly Sphinx-like shapes can, in fact, come from materials being eroded by fast flows.” For their study, the team took harder rock encased in mounds of soft clay to mimic the terrain along the Nile River in northeastern Egypt. They then washed over these formations with a fast-flowing stream of water to replicate the wind and, in the end, the clay assumed a Sphinx-like shape. The resulting form consisted of a lion’s “head,” “neck,” “paws” laid out in front and an arched “back". “There are, in fact, yardangs (rock features formed by air erosion) in existence today that look like seated or lying animals, lending support to our conclusions,” Ristroph pointed out. Still, we’re sure Ristroph would be the first to admit that he and his colleagues weren’t the first to come up with the aeolian erosion theory. In 1981, geologist Farouk El-Baz suggested that the iconic Sphinx was originally a flat-topped shape that was worn down by wind over time. Furthermore, El-Baz believed that the builders of Ancient Egypt would have known of these natural processes, and so carefully selected the shapes of their most iconic structures to withstand them. "Today, the pyramids of Giza exist in perfect harmony with their windy environment," the scientist said back in 2001. "Had the ancients built their monuments in the shape of a cube, a rectangle, or even a stadium, they would have been erased by the ravages of wind erosion long ago." Nevertheless, the New York University team were the first to show exactly how this phenomenon could have occurred, and their findings have broader implications. "The work may also be useful to geologists as it reveals factors that affect rock formations—namely, that they are not homogeneous or uniform in composition,” Ristroph said. "The unexpected shapes come from how the flows are diverted around the harder or less-erodible parts." Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

Pokémon Sleep, a game in which players go to bed in real life to win, is rocketing up the App Store charts. The app is now sixth in Apple’s charts, suggesting that makers The Pokémon Company may have found a way to replicate some of the success of their previous hit Pokemon Go. To play the game, people download the app onto their iPhone – or use a separate, paid-for accessory that the company says can be used to track sleep as well as make it easier. Once that is done, users mostly play by going to sleep. When they wake up in the morning, they will receive information about their sleep patterns – how long they slept, what kind of sleep that was, and whether players made any noises during the night – and receive rewards of Pokémon that will be caught based on that data. The game has received some negative reviews: on the iOS App Store, one player called it “deeply flawed and predatory”, criticising the fact that tracking sleep with the iPhone app means sleeping with it and leaving the screen on. While players can use the Pokémon Go Plus +, which has been given a confusing name presumably to separate it from the existing Pokémon Go Plus, that costs $60. It also received a critical review in The Verge, which said that while it was “incredibly cute”, it came with some drawbacks, including the fact that it requires players to undertake dull tasks during the day and offered few meaningful ways to actually improve sleep. Nonetheless, the game appears to have proven incredibly successful on the iPhone’s App Store and Android’s Google Play Store, where it has been downloaded millions of times. The game comes amid a growing interest in the benefits of sleep, and the technology that can help promote it. Multiple wearables such as those made by Apple, Garmin and Whoop all track the sleeping habits of their wearers, and other companies have promoted cooling and massaging technologies that are aimed at helping people get more restful sleep.

Germany’s ruling coalition agreed on an expanded package of tax-relief measures for companies worth about €7 billion ($7.6

Here's how to sign up for the Palia Beta.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised that his government will forge ahead with investments needed to modernize the economy

Scientists have discovered how to double the efficiency of an ultra-lightweight solar cell, which they claim could be used to harvest the Sun’s energy in space at a never-before-seen scale. The next-generation solar panels, built by a team from the University of Pennsylvania, use layers that are over a thousand times thinner than a human hair, yet capable of absorbing a comparable amount of sunlight to commercially available solar cells. The extreme thinness earned them the label two-dimensional, or 2D TMDC, as they are only a few atoms thick. The ability to produce more electricity per weight compared to traditional silicon solar cells makes them highly suitable for sending into space to harvest the Sun’s energy, according to the researchers. “High specific power is actually one of the greatest goals of any space-based light harvesting or energy harvesting technology,” said Deep Jariwala from the University of Pennsylvania. “This is not just important for satellites or space stations, but also if you want real utility-scale solar power in space. The number of [silicon] solar cells you would have to ship up is so large that no space vehicles currently can take those kinds of materials up there in an economically viable way.” By modelling the innovative solar cell computationally, Professor Jariwala and his team were able to come up with a design that has double the efficiency compared to what had previously been demonstrated. A paper detailing the research, titled ‘How good can 2D excitonic solar cells be?’, was published in the scientific journal Device on Tuesday. The researchers now hope to figure out how to achieve large-scale production for the design. “I think people are slowly coming to the realisation that 2D TMDCs are excellent photovoltaic materials, though not for terrestrial applications, but for applications that are mobile, more flexible, like space-based applications,” said Professor Jariwala. “The weight of 2D TMDC solar cells is 100 times less than silicon or gallium arsenide solar cells, so suddenly these cells become a very appealing technology.” The concept of space-based solar arrays was first theorised more than 50 years ago, with scientists noting that the Sun’s energy could be converted into microwaves and beamed down to ground-based receiving stations that convert them into electricity. It has several advantages over terrestrial setups, as they would not be limited by cloud cover or the Sun’s typical cycle. Research has accelerated in recent years following several major breakthroughs and developments with solar energy harvesting and orbital rocket launches, including the emergence of private space companies like SpaceX that have significantly reduced the cost of delivering payloads into space. Last month, Japanese space agency JAXA announced that it was aiming to set up the first satellite transmitters for a commercial-scale solar farm in space by 2025. The European Space Agency is also planning to establish a development program for this untapped renewable energy resource through its Solaris programme. Read More Japan aims to beam solar power from space by 2025 Electric car drives for 100 hours non-stop on futuristic road Scientists smash world record for solar power window material Apple don’t want you to buy a headset - they’re selling a vision of the future Apple lets people get brand new iPhone update early – but there’s a very big warning